Who is the company trying to reach with these commercials except, perhaps, all those white women who read ‘The Help’ and are looking to recapture some of that for themselves? It’s certainly an interesting marketing ploy. Perhaps that is the point. Continue Reading Karen L. Cox: Black Domestic in a Can: A South Carolina Ad Agency “Helps” Glory Foods
What is the difference between life and death? It has nothing to do with the crime or the criminal. It has far more to do with local politics (does the prosecutor think he can get some political advantage going for death rather than life or a term of years?), money (can the accused afford a lawyer and investigators who will do the same kind of work the prosecutor gets done automatically?), the location (most death sentences are handed down and carried out in the south, but not uniformly; in Texas, for example, a preponderance of the death sentences come from just three counties). And, finally, it depends on the composition of the appellate courts the year a particular case comes up: some panels are sticklers for justice; some are sticklers for going by the current rules. Sometimes justice and the rules are incompatible, and in capital cases, lives hang in the balance. Continue Reading Interview: Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian discuss Death Row in America
Turning to the war, Davis confirmed reports that some slaves were armed and fighting for the South, but he assured his audience that it “was done solely on compulsion.” Having been a slave foreman, he perceptively compared their plight to that of slaves who “were often made to fill the place of whipping-master.” He maintained that the best way to prevent the South from continually taking military advantage of the enslaved community was to free the slaves so they could “go forth conquering.” Continue Reading Excerpt: The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation, by Glenn David Brasher
“Beltway politics” are not the only barrier to efficiency in government. Despite what they say, the American people have long preferred an inefficient federal government that they could shape rather than an efficient government that they could not. Continue Reading Sarah S. Elkind: The Allure of an Inefficient Government
[This article is cross-posted from Pop South.] Oh, for goodness sake! The Republican candidates for president went South and the next thing you know Mitt Romney touted “cheesy grits” and practiced saying “ya’ll,” and Rick Santorum adopted a hick accent and told people “I got kin here in Mississippi. I’m not sure. . . (don’t say “what I think about it!”). .… Continue Reading Karen L. Cox: Republican Candidates in the South: A Confederacy of Dunces. So, too, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir & Co.
In this excerpt from ‘American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta,’ Nan Elizabeth Woodruff examines what led up to the massacre of black sharecroppers in 1919 Phillips County, Arkansas, and how the official narrative of events was fabricated and disseminated by white leaders. Continue Reading Excerpt: “American Congo” by Nan Elizabeth Woodruff
In this excerpt from “War! What is it Good For?” by Kimberly L. Phillips, the author discusses the antiwar activism of Langston Hughes and Nina Simone. Continue Reading Excerpt: War! What is it Good For?, by Kimberley L. Phillips
In this excerpt from Whiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels & Stage Europeans in African American Performance, McAllister describes some 19th-century black fashionistas in New York and Charleston. Continue Reading Book excerpt: Whiting Up, by Marvin McAllister
The fourth bag, the one for which O’Hair had to pay, contained weapons, essential implements of warfare that speak to the harsh conditions one would expect to find in a war zone. Yet no one has ever asked what is, in my opinion, the most important question: What was in the other three bags? Continue Reading Meredith Lair: What Was in the Other Three Bags?
An interview with Donald Goodman, manager of the Eugene Walter estate and co-editor of ‘The Happy Table of Eugene Walter: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink.’ Continue Reading Interview: Donald Goodman on the Legacy of Eugene Walter
In an excerpt from ‘Music from the True Vine: Mike Seeger’s Life & Musical Journey,’ biographer Bill C. Malone relates Seeger’s introduction to Hazel Dickens. Continue Reading Bill C. Malone: Music from the True Vine – An Excerpt
As a new documentary film about the Loving v. Virginia case appears, we look back to Fay Botham’s book for some of the religious and legal aspects of the case. Includes an excerpt from the book. Continue Reading Learn about and learn from Loving v Virginia
Historian Karen L. Cox’s book Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture is prompting lively discussion and an art exhibit. Includes video. Continue Reading Karen L. Cox’s book inspires new conversation, new images of the South
Yesterday’s Boston Globe features an article by R. Blakeslee Gilpin, author of the forthcoming John Brown Still Lives!: America’s Long Reckoning with Violence, Equality, and Change. Gilpin explains how what we now know as the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” originated as “John Brown’s Body” among soldiers in Boston. John Brown, the subject of Gilpin’s book, was a radical abolitionist–he… Continue Reading “Why they sang about John Brown”–R. Blakeslee Gilpin for the Boston Globe
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